Free A Sterkarm Kiss by Susan Price Page B

do with her, and she hadn’t asked any questions. “None of thine affair, lass!” her aunt would have said, if she had, and would then have looked closely through all the work Joan had done that day, searching for faults. It was not wise, if you lived at Brackenhill, to draw Mistress Crosar’s attention.
    So it had been a shock when, before going to bed one evening, as she knelt before her father for his blessing, he’d said, “Joan, I’ve something to tell thee. Th’art to be wed.”
    The maids and serving men gathered near the fire caught the words, and a hush fell. They all listened.
    A jolt of fear had gone through Joan like an arrow strike, but she’d kept still, her head down. With everyone watching and listening, the only privacy she had was to keep her feelings to herself. For a frantic eye blink of time, she’d searched through her mind for the right thing to say, something that her father and aunt would approve. “Thanks shall you have, sir.”
    â€œBe that all tha say?” her aunt demanded. “When thy father has gone to such trouble for thee? I should think tha’d be more grateful than that!”
    Still kneeling, still keeping her head down, Joan said, “A thousand thanks shall you have, sir, a thousand thanks!” She was starting to cry and had to tighten the muscles of her throat to hide it so that no one would see or hear. No one must be able to whisper afterward, in kitchen corners and stables, “Didst see her tears?”
    Sounding amused, her father said, “Dost not wish to know who thine husband is to be?”
    â€œIf it please you, sir.”
    â€œThine husband shall be Per Toorkildsson Sterkarm. One they call May.”
    The shock had been so great, she’d looked up and stared into her father’s face. A Sterkarm? That ill-bred, brawling litter of upstarts? With their bragging badge, to which they had no right—that brood of thieves and murderers?
    â€œNo doubt tha’rt surprised,” her father said, nodding. “It be a match I never thought to make myself. But Elven wish it. I’ve thought on it much, and I reckon we can make no better bargain.” He put his warm hand on her head. “God bless thee, child, and keep thee safe through night.”
    Joan remained kneeling, her mind blank with confusion and fright, until her aunt said, “Art fixed there, lass? Away to bed!” And Joan left the hot, crowded, noisy hall and went up the cool, dark stairs to the family’s private floor above. There her maid was waiting to undo her tight laces and let down her hair, and there Joan cried, while begging, “No tell, Christy, no tell.”
    â€œI will no, I will no,” Christy had said. “Everybody be sorry for you, mistress, everybody be. Wed to a Sterkarm!”
    Of course, everyone had known before her.
    She shared a little box bed with her aunt, and when Mistress Crosar came up, she had to pretend to be sleeping. But she lay awake all night, stifling any sound she made with the blankets. Her father slept across the chamber, in another box bed. She could not make a peep.
    It was no surprise to her that she had to wed. Sons had to fight for the family, and perhaps be killed or maimed. Daughters had to wed for the family and face the dangers of childbirth. She had known this all her life, but it had always seemed something that would happen next year, or the year after, not now, not soon.
    Sometimes she’d almost looked forward to her wedding, because it would mean escape from the rule of her father and aunt. She would be a woman, ruling her own household. She would stride then, like her aunt, and look up from the floor, and give orders in a loud, firm voice. How this change in her would come about she wasn’t sure, but she had an idea that it was something that happened when you became a woman and married. You woke up changed, knowing what orders to give and how to give